Thursday, November 04, 2010

Gender arbitrage in South Korea

If South Korean firms won’t make use of female talent, foreigners will

Another joyful day at the office.“DO YOU know you have to give everything to become a TV announcer?” These words cost Kang Yong-seok, a member of South Korea’s parliament, his membership of the ruling Grand National Party in July. His insinuation that a woman must sleep her way to the top to work in television embarrassed his colleagues and set off a national debate about sexism.

Working women in South Korea earn 63% of what men do. Not all of this is the result of discrimination, but some must be. South Korean women face social pressure to quit when they have children, making it hard to stay on the career fast track. Many large companies have no women at all in senior jobs.

This creates an obvious opportunity. If female talent is undervalued, it should be plentiful and relatively cheap. Firms that hire more women should reap a competitive advantage. And indeed, there is evidence that one type of employer is doing just that.

Jordan Siegel of Harvard Business School reports that foreign multinationals are recruiting large numbers of educated Korean women. In South Korea, lifting the proportion of a firm’s managers who are female by ten percentage points raises its return on assets by one percentage point, Mr Siegel estimates.

South Korea is the ideal environment for gender arbitrage. The workplace may be sexist, but the education system is extremely meritocratic. Lots of brainy female graduates enter the job market each year. In time their careers are eclipsed by those of men of no greater ability. This makes them poachable. Goldman Sachs, an American investment bank, has more women than men in its office in Seoul.

Only 60% of female South Korean graduates aged between 25 and 64 are in work—making educated South Korean women the most underemployed in OECD countries. That may change, however. Marriage and fertility rates have plunged. There were 10.6 marriages per 1,000 people in 1980, but only 6.2 last year. South Korean women have an average of only 1.15 children, one of the lowest rates anywhere. That has troubling implications for the country, but should help women in the workplace. Firms will have to use all the talent they can find. If they don’t, their rivals will.
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